AWS Network Load Balancer (NLB) is a highly scalable and high-performance load-balancing service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It is designed to efficiently distribute incoming network traffic across multiple targets, such as Amazon EC2 instances, containers, IP addresses, and Lambda functions, at the transport layer (Layer 4) of the OSI model.
One of the key benefits of AWS NLB is its ability to handle extremely high volumes of traffic with low latency and high throughput. NLB is optimized for ultra-low latency and can scale to millions of requests per second, making it suitable for applications that require high-performance and real-time communication, such as gaming, media streaming, and financial services.
- AWS NLB operates transparently, meaning it preserves the source IP address of incoming client connections and forwards traffic directly to the target instances without modifying the packets.
- This makes NLB ideal for applications that require visibility into the client’s IP address, such as IP-based access controls or logging.
- NLB supports both internal and external load balancing, allowing organizations to deploy load balancers within virtual private clouds (VPCs) or across different VPCs.
- It also provides static IP addresses for the load balancer, enabling seamless integration with other AWS services and ensuring consistent network configurations.
In summary, AWS Network Load Balancer (NLB) is a powerful and versatile load-balancing service that provides high-performance, low-latency, and scalable traffic distribution for a wide range of applications and use cases in the AWS cloud environment.